Wyperfeld National Park - 3rd largest in Victoria, and made almost exclusively of sand and sunshine. And flies... This is the same area we'd visited a few times before, a count making it our 5th or 6th visit to the park and this one was a challenge. Logistically we were up against it, with fuel being out major concern. With no way to do fuel drops other than a crude method early in the morning, we packed everything we need, and made a plan to make a plan later...
Firday arvo we both lit out of work and hit the road about 2. The usual stories on the road will be told at a later date, but a kid that was surely the byproduct of the carnival industry amused us with his tales in Dimboola! The k's slid by, and we hit the dirt about 9pm.
And drove some more...
And arrived where we needed to be about midnight. Not a bad friday stint in the seat after a week at work. So with a full moon and the usual safety gear that one wears 4wding, we rolled the bikes off for a quick sniff around in the full moon. Very quickly did we learn that lesson, and sheepishly rolled back into camp after learning that big bikes and thongs are great in theory, but not so in practice...
Set up, we then blinked and woke up... Ready to ride, albeit a bit bleary eyed. But the desert waits for no man and we geared up.
Quick stop at the service station for some air in the tyres, and we load up for a quick look at the start of the trail, to 'you know, see if we can find it'...
We had to whip down to see the mythical Milmed Rock, to see what all the fuss is about.... (thats called sarcasm folks...)
Hoff bought his ticket to climb, and made it to the summit...
Seriously, there is a visitors book... This is the rock, above...!
So we did end up finding the trail, as promised. And it was bloody hard... I can say now that we both really weren't enjoying the first 10k of it, being quite overgrown and tight makes it really hard to ride big bikes in deep sand.
There were of course sections of whoops that made it all worth while!
Curiously, slowing down is often the hardest thing we do out here. Its where the most crashes seem to happen!
For such a harsh environment, there are some pretty things tucked away.
The arrow points to Hoff at the top of a dune, to give you an idea of scale.
And we reached the end of out fuel window, which also happened to be a junction. There was a couple of things that people had bought out there deliberately. One was an engraved plate with directions...
The other, well I guess they thought you could google it...?!
All parked up, in the 35degree heat. Fuel was starting to vapourise when the bikes were working hard, just letting us know that it was not ideal out there! That an getting the last few mouthfuls of water out of your water bladder, and not being home yet, and the bottom of the cupboard being empty in the food stakes, meant that it got a little bit focused on the way back to camp. And that first 10k of crap was a pretty bitter pill to finish on. But as always, we got it done, safe and sound.
In somewhat of a tradition, being pretty shelled at the end of a ride is pretty much customary. The heat in full riding gear was also a bit of a change from Melbourne weather, but we'd rather go home intact and warm, than cool and bent up.
So whilst we waited for the heat to die down, we fed the flies and messed around with the RC.
Being a little bit unhappy with how the ride went, and the reality that we were in a very central location with really just that one trail nearby, we decided to pack it up and go explore another section of the park for the next day. So back into the car we went, and headed north once more.
We headed into whats known as Big Dune, and arrived once again well after dark. After setting up, we climbed Big Dune to watch the moon rise in total silence and stillness. In danger of sounding naff, it was actually really amazing to be standing up atop a dune at night, with the moon coming up so you can see like daylight, and not a single sound to be heard.
This is the moon rising!
Another quick nap, and the greasy spoon provided a 1 course breakfast once again. Tasted amazing too, as it always does! (Just forgot the damn sauce...!)
Heading out to loop around to the top end of the trail we did on saturday, we came through a few areas of dunes. This area below was called white Springs, but I think the salinity may have done a lot for the naming rights of the area... Plenty of hard baked clay and very very stagnant water.
From the slightly upside down smiles of yesterday, more through frustration and dehydration than any real reason, the smiles, yelling and laughter were back. Many of the trails we rode this morning were awesome sweeping double track with plenty of sand, making for side by side riding at its greatest. As the trail flips back and forth, each person gets a better run than the other and so the chase is on. Corner after corner!
Sometimes on the tops of the dunes, the bricks would talk. Most of the time, a phone is nothing but a paperweight. But occasionally you can make your son's day with a quick chat.
And finally, this is a panorama to show the true emptiness of this part of the world. Treat it with respect, it says... Or it will bite. Lesson learnt. This pano was taken at a point as close to the connection of the trail from saturday as we could get with our fuel range, and it was in some of the deepest sand and biggest whoops we've ever seen. All in all, a pretty amazing adventure for reasons that we didn't expect. But thats what makes it such an adventure sometimes!
And the next trip is already planned, but its going to have to wait until the end of summer to hit the park back up. Thanks for stopping by for a look, feel free to share this around.
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